Blip.TV Soars Past 100 Million Views For The First Time

Blip.TV, the online video startup, just reached an impressive milestone: The company did more than 100 million video views in a single month for the first time in October -- specifically, 113 million views. And it is on pace to smash last month's record, at a run rate nearing 140 million views for November, which would represent 20% month-over-month growth.

Revenue, too, is growing nicely for the company, its executives tell us. Its 2010 sales will represent 5X growth over 2009, Blip.TV says.

Blip.TV, based in New York, is a sort-of next generation television network, centered around online video. It doesn't support any huge, mainstream hits with celebrity actors -- those shows are generally too expensive to produce, given the economics of web video. (For now, TV will continue to attract those types of shows, until the economics of TV erode much further.)

But instead, Blip offers a roster of independent web video producers many of the same services that a TV network offers TV producers: It hosts their shows in its video player; provides distribution to other websites like YouTube and video services like Google TV, Roku, and Boxee; provides an ad sales force; generates revenue; and develops back-end tools for analytics and other functions.

Much of Blip's growth is the result of the company building out its sales force over the past year, which is now up to 10 people, according to CEO and cofounder Mike Hudack. Now that the company is able to attract big advertisers -- such as JPMorgan, General Mills, AT&T, etc. -- it's able to generate real revenue for its show producers.

Some producers are generating revenue on a $500,000 annual run rate, Blip tells us. And that's keeping producers loyal to the company, encouraging them to make more episodes, creating more views, and thus generating more revenue for both the producers and Blip.

The 5-year-old company is still relatively small. But it seems to be on a solid track, and after doubling its staff size over the past year to 36, it plans to double again next year.